Where: Coventry University
Workshop Date: 20th November 2014
Organisers: Dialogue Society, Birmingham Branch and Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies, Coventry University
The Dialogue Society, Birmingham Branch and Coventry University’s Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies invites abstracts from scholars and relevant practitioners who wish to share and explore ideas and research findings concerning the sense of belonging in contemporary Britain’s diverse society. The Dialogue Society sees a broad and seemingly reasonable consensus that sense of belonging is vital for a thriving and peaceful society, and accordingly wishes to contribute to illuminating its character and effects and exploring how it can be cultivated.
‘Sense of belonging’ is a phrase often heard in discussions of the cohesion of our society and, particularly, instances of its breakdown. Following the urban disturbances of summer 2011 commentators across the spectrum speculated about how rioters could have come to feel so little sense of belonging to their local area that they could loot and torch their local shops and incite such fear in their communities. The Reading the Riots research undertaken by LSE and the Guardian cited a sense of alienation as a widely shared characteristic of the rioters, with barely half feeling ‘part of British society.’ The same questions about sense of belonging, or the lack of it, have been asked in the wake of terrorist attacks in which young British people brought up in Britain have murdered fellow citizens. And the need for belonging is frequently cited as a key driver of gang membership.
The crime and social problems associated in public discourse with the lack of a sense of belonging are not the reserve of ethnic/cultural minorities. In this workshop, we invite contributors to shed light on the nature, causes and effects of sense of belonging and of its absence both in minority communities and majority communities. We seek to examine the impact of a lack of sense of belonging outside dramatic cases of crime and anti-social behavior as well as in those cases. We have a particular interest in contributions exploring how the absence of a sense of belonging might be addressed.
Contributions will be discussed among a diverse group of academics, professionals and opinion formers at a one-day workshop, 20th November 2014, to be held at Coventry University. As an outcome we aim to produce a publication from the presented papers and relevant debates generated during the Q&As.
09:00 – 09:30 Arrival and Registration
09:30 – 09:45 Introduction from the organisers and editorial team
09:45 – 10:00 Keynote speech 1
10:00 – 12:00 Panel 1
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 13:15 Keynote Speech 2
13:15 – 15:15 Panel 2
15:15 – 15:40 Coffee break
15:40 – 17:40 Panel 3
17:40 – 18:00 Closing remarks comments
PANEL 1: Economy, Politics and Sense of Belonging
Pluralising National Identities: Lessons from Theory
Nasar Meer
The New Britishness: Remaking Belonging and non-Belonging in an Era of Austerity
Dr Chris Gifford
Social Cohesion in the New Age of Capital: From Moral Imperative
to Moral Panic
Stephen Cowden & Gurnam Singh
Feeling at Home? Reading Housing Discourse as a Barrier to Belonging in Britain
Rebecca Ehata
PANEL 2: Multiple Identities and Sense of Belonging
A Patriotism in Fragments
Prof Les Back
Multiple Belongings: Interreligious Marriage Between Pakistani Muslims and non-Muslims
Audrey C. Allas
“Citizen of the World”: Sense or Lack of Belonging?
Bénédicte Chaix
A Sense of Belonging in a Diverse Britain: The Migrant Experience of British Pakistanis in Britain, as Explored Through the Literary Work of Qaisra Sahraz’s Novel, Revolt, and Short Fiction, A Pair of Jeans, Escape, and Train to Krakow
Qaisra Sahraz
PANEL 3: Diasporic Communities and Sense of Belonging
'Placebo Nostalgia': The Greek-Cypriot Diaspora in Birmingham, Its Churches, and Limits to Who Can Belong
Michalis Poupazis
Diaspora Mobilisation and Belonging in the UK: The Case of the Iraqi Diaspora in the Aftermath of the 2003 Intervention
Oula Kadhum
Christianity: Oppressor and Liberator? Reflections on Black Theology and the Religious Experiences of U.K. African-Caribbean Elders
Josephine Kwhali
In general, participants will need to cover travel and accommodation costs.
Workshop proceedings will be published in advance of the Workshop to allow contributors to read one another’s papers and engage with them more deeply and to disseminate the papers more widely to relevant scholars, researchers and libraries. See here for an example of our workshop proceedings’ publications.
Edited versions of some papers may be selected for either of the two Journals published by the organizers. Authors of selected papers will be notified in due course.
In addition, an edited version of all or some of the papers presented may also be published by an independent reputable publishing house. See here and here for edited publications of Dialogue Society conferences.
Copyright of the papers accepted to the Workshop will be vested in the Dialogue Society.
Authors are invited to send abstracts (maximum 400 words) of their proposed papers addressing questions such as the following:
Prof Eddie Halpin, Leeds Metropolitan University
Prof Alan Hunter, Coventry University
Dr Karim Murji, The Open University
Prof Alpaslan Ozerdem, Coventry University
Dr Richard Race, University of Roehampton
Prof Simon Robinson Leeds Metropolitan University
The workshop co-ordinator is Mustafa Demir. Any questions should be addressed to him by email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Abstracts and CVs should be submitted, in English only, as MS Word documents attached to an email to Mustafa Demir, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , no later than 17:00 UK time, 16th May 2014.
Authors must indicate at this stage if audio-visual equipment may be required in the presentation of their paper and must give any relevant technical specifications.
The first page of the manuscript should contain:
Manuscripts should be approximately 4,000 to 8,000 words, excluding bibliography. Longer manuscripts will be considered only in exceptional circumstances.
Articles will be peer reviewed by members of the Editorial Board.
Final papers to be received by 15th October 2014.
Manuscripts should be presented in a form and style as set out the Journal's Style Guide below.
Use the Harvard Style, following the version explained and exemplified below.
Works should be cited in the text by the name/date system: that is, give the author’s surname, year of publication and, where relevant, the page reference immediately after the material derived from the source, e.g. (Jones 1998, 64). When referring to text spanning more than one page: (Max 1997, 81-83).
Please include page numbers for journal articles as well as books.
In the bibliography, for books, please follow this style (punctuation, upper/lower case) exactly: Surname, Initial. Initial. (Date of publication) Title, Place of publication: Press. E.g. Dawkins, R. (1989) The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
For journals (again please follow this style exactly): Surname, Initial. Initial. (Date of publication) ‘Title of paper’, Title of Journal, volume number (issue number), x-y.
See 17 below for further bibliography examples.
Books
Colorado, J.A. (2006) Economic theory in the Mexican context: recent developments on the ground, trans. K. Smith, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Makkai, A. and Lockwood, D. G. (1973) Stratificational Linguistics: A Reader, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Pike, K. L. (1967) Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behaviour, revised edn., The Hague: Mouton.
Rajiv Mehrotra (ed.) (2006) Understanding the Dalai Lama, London: Penguin Books.
Chapter in an edited volume:
Veltman, R. (1982) ‘Comparison and intensification: an ideal but problematic domain for systematic functional theory’, in J. Benson and W. Greaves (eds.), Systematic Perspectives on Discourse, Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 15–32.
Journals
Flyvbjerg, B. ‘Habermas and Foucault: Thinkers for Civil Society?’ The British Journal of Sociology, 49 (2), 210-233.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1961) ‘Categories of the theory of grammar’, Word, 17, 241–92.
Lamb, S. M. (1964) ‘The sememic approach to structural semantics’, American Anthropologist, 66 (3, Part 2), 57–78 (reprinted in Pike, 1967).
Conference papers
Published paper:
Gouadec, D. (2001) Training translators: certainties, uncertainties, dilemmas, in B. Maia, J. Haller and M. Ulrych, (eds.) Training the language services
provider for the new millennium: proceedings of the III Encontros de Tradução de Astra-FLUP, Universidade do Porto, 17 March. Porto: Universidade do Porto,
31-41.
Paper published online:
Said, M (2006) Reading the World In Fethullah Gulen's Educational Philosophy, Second International Conference on Islam in the Contemporary World: The Fethullah Gülen Movement in Thought and Practice, Southern Methodist
University, Dallas, Texas, 4-5 March. Available at:
http://www.fethullahgulenconference.org/dallas/read.php?p=reading-world-fethullah-gulen-educational-philosophy (Accessed 26 March 2013).
Unpublished paper:
Scollo, M. (2012) Antiguan contrapuntal conversation in the Bronx, New York. Paper presented at The ethnography of communication: Ways forward,
Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, 10-14 June, unpublished.
Internet
Web document:
Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources (2006) Being Prepared for an Influenza Pandemic: a Kit for Small Businesses, Government of
Australia. Available at: http://www.innovation.gov.au. (Accessed 28 February 2009).
Webpage:
Byrd, K. (2013) Report on Sufi-Yogi Dialogue. Available at: http://www.sevenpillarshouse.org/article/report_on_sufi-yogi_dialogue/. (Accessed 1
March, 2013).
Dialogos (n.d.) Create inspired futures. Available at: http://dialogos.com/about/overview/ (Accessed 26 March 2013).
(Please use ‘n.d.’ to indicate that no date for the document or webpage is available, both in the in-text citation and in the bibliography.)
NCVO (2013) Budget 2013: NCVO’s Response. Available at: http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/news/politics/budget-2013-ncvo’s-response. (Accessed 26 March 2013).
Blog:
Newton, A. (2007) Newcastle toolkit, Angela Newton blog, 16 January. Available at: https://elgg.leeds.ac.uk/libajn/weblog/. (Accessed 23 February
2007).
Newspaper articles
Independent, The (1989) Limits to mutual tolerance (editorial), The Independent, 18 February.
Jones, J. (2013) Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum – review, The Guardian, 26 March. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/mar/26/life-and-death-pompeii-review. (Accessed 26 March 2013).
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